Lord Adonis: Children who are in the care of the local authority must be provided with a care plan that sets out how the authority proposes to meet the child's assessed needs, whilst Asset is the standard assessment framework used by all youth offending teams (YOTs) in England and Wales with young people aged 10 to 17 who offend. Asset will include identifying information specific to each child, including information about their care status. It aims to identify key risk factors contributing to a young person's offending behaviour along with protective factors that might help to reduce the risk of reoffending.
	Social workers and YOT workers have shared responsibilities where a looked-after child is also a young person who offends, and information in Asset will include information drawn from the child's care plan. Where a child enters custody, the YOT worker should ensure that the custodial establishment is aware of the child's care status, including any entitlement to leaving care services, and their social worker's contact details. It is important that the custodial establishment receives the child's care plan alongside the Asset assessment.
	Our Green Paper Care Matters was issued in October 2006. This includes proposals for improving the support for young people from care who enter custody

Lord Adonis: In the 2005 Annual Population Survey, 22.1 per cent of working-age residents in Manchester had no qualifications. The table below shows how this compares with wider geographical areas:
	
		
			 Geographical area Proportion of working-age residents with no qualifications 
			 Manchester1 22.1 per cent 
			 Greater Manchester2 17.8 per cent 
			 North-west3 17.0 per cent 
			 England 14.1 per cent 
			 1. Local education authority  
			 2. Learning and Skills Council area  
			 3. Government Office region

Lord Davies of Oldham: The information requested falls within the responsibilities of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
	Letter from Karen Dunnell, National Statistician, to Lord Laird, dated 19 March 2007.
	As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question to ask what the current average wage is in (a) Northern Ireland, and (b) the United Kingdom. (HL2600)
	Average earnings are estimated from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) and are provided for full-time employees on adult rates whose pay for the survey period was not affected by absence. This is the standard definition used for the ASHE. The ASHE does not collect data on the self-employed and people who do unpaid work.
	I attach tables showing average gross weekly earnings for 2006 for all full-time employees on adult rates. These statistics are already published on the National Statistics website at: www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=13101.
	The ASHE, carried out in April of each year, is the most comprehensive source of earnings information in the United Kingdom. It is a 1 per cent sample of all employees who are members of pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) schemes.
	
		
			 Gross weekly (£) pay for full-time employee jobsa by place of work 
			  Median Mean 
			 United Kingdom 447 537 
			 Northern Ireland 405 472 
			 a Employees on adult rates whose pay for the survey pay period was not affected by absence.   
			 Guide to quality:   
			 The coefficient of variation (CV) indicates the quality of a figure; the smaller the CV value, the higher the quality.   
			 The true value is likely to lie within +/- twice the CV—e.g. for an average of 200 with a CV of 5 per cent, we would expect the population average to be within the range 180 to 220.   
			 All the figures on this table have a CV of less than 5 per cent.   
			 The median replaces the mean as the headline statistic. The weighted mean is the sum of the weighted values divided by the sum of the weights. The median is the value below which 50 per cent of employees fall. It is preferred over the mean for earnings data as it is influenced less by extreme values and because of the skewed distribution of earnings data.   
			 Source: Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Office for National Statistics.

Lord Davies of Oldham: The information requested falls within the responsibilities of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
	Letter from Karen Dunnell, National Statistician, to Lord Rogan, dated 19 March 2007.
	As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question about the number of people between the ages of 16 and 26 who are currently not in education, training or employment in (a) England, (b) Scotland, (c) Wales and (d) Northern Ireland. (HL2507)
	The attached table shows the number of people between the ages of 16 and 26, by gender, who are currently not in education, training or employment. These estimates are not seasonally adjusted.
	Similar estimates are published each month in Labour Market Statistics—First Release in table 14, covering the UK for age groups 16 to 17, 18 to 24, and 25 and over (see the attached link www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsukO2O7.pdf).
	Estimates are taken from the Labour Force Survey (LFS). As with any sample survey, estimates from the LFS are subject to a margin of uncertainty.
	
		
			 Table 1People between the ages of 16 and 26, by gender, currently not in education1, training or employment2, United Kingdom, not seasonally adjusted.
			 Three months ending December 2006 All Persons (000's) Male (000's) Female (000's) 
			 United Kingdom 1,408 595 813 
			 England 1,197 507 690 
			 Wales 69 31 38 
			 Scotland 105 41 64 
			 Northern Ireland 37 16 21 
			 Source: ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS)
			 1 Refers to those who are not in full-time education.
			 2 People not in employment refers to those who are unemployed or economically inactive.